I recently completed the refresh of my personal projects logo! This is more of a personal change than anything I expect others to get excited about, but I wanted to share it with folks, as well as talk about the journey of self discovery that was required in order to make it happen.
When I started my music production journey back in 2013, like all the cool music producer folks I hung out with, I needed a logo. I’ve used the moniker “belthesar”, an accidental misspelling of one of the Biblical Magi (of which these wise men were borrowed heavily in JRPGs in the 90’s and 2000’s) since my teens, so it only made sense to continue using such a self-referential name for this project. Young me, with a passing adeptness in digital image editing software, had created several “logos” in the past, but the biggest reason to make that had always been “because it looks cool”, not because I really understood the value or purpose of having a logo. This time, there was a purpose, and a story to tell, and even though I didn’t actually think in those terms when designing it, I would later discover that I following the time honored philosophy of logo design.
When I started my music production journey, I was entrenched in the Chiptune music scene, and when I first started out, I thought that was what I was going to be producing. Therefore, I wanted a logo that evoked the vibes of classic video game systems. Given my proclivities towards PCs as well as consoles though, I sought inspiration in the logos of the early era of personal computers as well as game consoles, and landed on the Sinclair Computers logo, creators of the ZX Spectrum.
I really liked the hyper-angular typeface, which evoked the look of a low-resolution pixel font, and the rainbow on the right intrigued me. A font replicating the logo’s typeface was easily accessible on the internet, so that made creating new typography easy. As for the rainbow, given that I was producing music, I felt like I could borrow the rainbow’s angled presentation to create a VU meter with a gradient. I flipped the orientation of the VU meter rainbow from the right side to the left side, which also worked for a postage stamp size logo usable for generic album art and social icons. The outcome was a certainly heavily borrowed from, but unique logo, and one that became synonymous with me for over a decade.
Cue a few weeks ago, as I was finishing my binge of Severence seasons 1 and 2 (minorest of spoilers), and I realized that I really liked the typography used on all of the signage used by Lumon on the Severed floor. I immediately wanted to discover what typeface was used by it, and thanks to the fan managed Severence wiki, I was able to source it. This started tickling my brain, and lead me to consider the eventual rebrand that I’d do.
In between the logo design phases of then and now, I had the great fortune of meeting my friend and colleague Nate Abell, a fantastic artist who has spent quite a bit of time in the games industry (and could be a great choice for your next project so you should check his portfolio wink wink nudge nudge). Nate helped put language to the logo designs I gravitate towards - Corporate Modernism, and with me a resource of logos to look into. This gave me some concrete concepts that I could orient my thoughts around. Thank you again, Nate, because I couldn’t have sorted this out without you.
The new logo again borrows from a typeface that I fell in love with, with some more significant modifications. In addition, given that I ended up using this logo not only for music, but also my technology projects, I felt it important to include symbology to reference both. The B, which like before will be used for social icons and generic album covers, includes two right facing triangles, one in the style of a “greater than” carat representing a shell prompt, the other a triangle representing a play button. In addition, many of the horizontal lines have been tapered to be more triangular, helping to convey the same story as the cutouts in the B.
I really enjoy the new logo. I’m still in the process of getting it swapped out everywhere, with Bandcamp and SoundCloud being the last places I’ll swap it, as I need additional art work for other assets to finish that up. That said, I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out, and more importantly to me, the journey of self discovery and the education on logo design that allowed me to explore a whole domain of skill that is generally outside my wheelhouse.